Music

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

As a distraction from the
sad news of David Bowie’s passing, I went to a screening of the restoration of
Orson Welles’ 1965 Falstaff epic, Chimes
at Midnight. I’d never seen it, but I love Shakespeare and the bearded,
corpulent Welles looked like Zardoz. This old lady in the audience simply could
not get over Welles’ appearance. “OH MY GAWD!” she yelled. “He looks like a
Macy’s Parade balloon!” This made me wish for an Orson Welles balloon in the
next Thanksgiving Day Parade. Somebody oughta do an online petition for this.

But I digress. So much to
digest here, in such great posts!

Marya:

Room might be tough going for
you. I’m less enthusiastic about it than others—it’s better in its first
half—but I liked it. I avoided The Visit,
which I kept getting mixed up with Lily Tomlin’s Grandma. Lily Tomlin in a found-footage horror movie sounds
absolutely delicious, but I still wouldn’t see it. I wish that genre would die
a thousand shaky-camera deaths. Grandma is cute, at least until Ernestine the
Operator starts killing people. See, there I go again.

We also agree on Carol, which I saw at the NYFF and then
again before filing my review because I was on the fence about it. I felt
nothing, concluding that it was a hollow exercise in style. It’s gorgeous to
look at, with Lachman and Powell doing spectacular work. But it’s like thumbing
through the 1952 Spiegel Catalog. It’s a construction so precious it should be
served under glass. Rooney Mara is way better than Cate Blanchett; the former
is all internal longing while the latter is a cipher whose red-Red-RED lipstick
would make The Rocky Horror Picture Show
lips green with envy. It’s also too docile, like a Guess Who’s Coming To Sapphic Dinner? I can imagine the ladies of Tangerine watching this and saying
“Gurrl, PLEASE!”

I was no fan of Beasts of No Nation. Folks like Matt
Prigge at Metro and Matt Seitz at Roger’s site do a better job of calling
bullshit on it than I have time to at the moment. But it irritated me something
fierce.

I love the show Silicon Valley (and do the recaps for it
at Vulture) because I work in Silicon
Valley. I understand the desire to slug folks like Oscar Isaac in Ex Machina because I’m a programmer.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a robot to dance with like he does, because no
robot can dance “Da Butt” without exploding.

Phillip:

I hope Billy Crudup never
goes the Laurence Fishburne route. Going all guv’ment name on us didn’t make Death Wish II respectable, artist
formerly known as Larry Fishburne! BILLY Crudup forever!

I was all ready to come
out here and defend Sly from your brutal (though not necessarily inaccurate)
assessment of him, but then Stallone’s Golden Globes acceptance speech forgot
to thank the brown people who helped him win. Allegedly, he came back during
the commercial break to thank director Ryan Coogler and co-star Michael B.
Jordan, but no TV viewer saw it. What do the young whippersnappers say today?
“PICTURES OR IT DIDN’T HAPPEN?”

But I love Creed (and Stallone’s performance) too
much to not speak to your comments. A prequel with Apollo Creed would be
useless for a variety of reasons. In the series, Apollo has a fully formed arc.
He goes from charitable villain to trusted ally to tragic figure (that last one
is in the most absurd chapter, Rocky IV,
which oddly enough is Coogler’s jumping off point for his movie). Coogler
talked about wanting to do this movie because he bonded with his dad over the Rocky series. I bet he asked the same
question I did as a kid: It’s great that Rocky’s the hero I’m rooting for, but
why couldn’t Apollo—someone who looks like me--be the hero? (Stallone
eventually does make Apollo a hero of sorts, but he’s still filtered through
Rocky’s shadow.)

Regarding Coogler’s
subversive pivoting of the franchise: It’s important how and why he did it.
Hollywood simply does not accept the notion that white male audiences will
accept and embrace a hero who is a minority or female. And considering all the
screaming and clothes-rending that went on vis-à-vis the colorization and/or
feminine invasion of the Star Wars
and superhero franchises, I can’t say I blame Hollywood for thinking this way.
Coogler knows the series runs through the Rocky character, so he needs to give
him a storyline for the Rocky fans. But it’s a rope-a-dope on the order of the
similar switcheroo in Sirk’s version of Imitation
of Life. This soapy, yet effective Rocky
storyline is a front for the real story of Adonis Creed’s ascension to the
status of new torchbearer/hero. Coogler knows that to have the audience
acceptance required to make his remix work, he’ll have to use Rocky the way
other movies use a Sidekick Negro character. Except unlike those characters,
Rocky has a backstory and an arc. And Stallone does a great job.

More importantly, for all
his love of Rocky’s character, Coogler gets to engage in some childhood
wish-fulfillment with his new hero, which I immediately picked up on and
embraced. He even cops to it in the film visually, with those scenes of young
brown faces looking at Adonis with admiration and hope. I’d never seen that in
a movie in 43 years of attending the cinema. I wish I had seen this movie when
I was a kid.

I look forward to Coogler
poking the Marvel hornets’ nest, though I kind of wish he’d said no to Black Panther.

Awards junkie that I am,
I must now go submit my Oscar predictions in my annual competition with my pal,
Danny. Hoping George Miller and Michael B. Jordan make the cut on Thursday, and
a CGI bear eats all the Revenant votes.

******************************************

Odie
Henderson is based in Clifton, New Jersey and makes
his living writing computer code, but is better known in online circles as a
film critic for RogerEbert.com who also writes extensively for his own
sites, Big Media Vandalism and Tales of Odienary
Madness. In 2013 he programmed a film series at the Off Plus Camera Film
festival in Krakow, Poland and has been known to perform a karaoke version of
EU’s ”Da Butt” upon request.

1 comment:

It was your original review, Odie, that prompted me to see "Creed," a movie I almost certainly would have avoided (despite - or perhaps because of - the praise generated for it on #FilmTwitter). Again, thanks for that.

I'm also delighted you saw "Chimes at Midnight." Welles was indeed getting heavy by that time, but he still wore a fat suit for Falstaff.